Trying to walk the narrow path

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I’ve been quite a bit more busy on my holiday trip than I imagined, which has limited the amount of time I have to just sit down and write. As such, I haven’t been churning out content quite as quickly as I thought I would be. However, I did restore some old posts that were lost (particularly some of the important images to them) and so now a whole train of thought from right before my life changing medical severance from the Marine Corps can be revisited. Read these in order:

Perhaps I am at a unique juncture in my life that many do not attain to, but I feel like I have done every natural thing I’ve ever really wanted to do (outside of write and publish a book). To elaborate, becoming a Marine was my superhero dream as a child – I greatly admired my grandfather who had retired as a LtCol (and I would later come to find out survived some of the bloodiest battles in USMC history) and watching documentaries about Marines made them seem like super humans. As I grew into a young boy and young “adult,” I never acquired much physique and moving into high school I dropped sports and focused purely on academics and the debate team.

When I moved to Utah at the age of 17 to escape a negative living environment, I only became more and more sedentary. I found success at both of the jobs that ended up hiring me, eventually focusing on one and becoming promoted to Assistant Manager at the number 1 store for a national watch retailer and repair shop. One of the VPs (the son of the man who started the company when it had been family owned) wanted to adopt me into the family, and it wasn’t just a joke. But this was back in 2007, with the economic downturn, and I didn’t like the way corporate had phrased some of their emails about why numbers weren’t as high as expected, so I decided to jump that sinking ship and consider a career in the Marine Corps.

There were many conflicting reasons about why I enlisted (especially during a bad time in the war) but the fact remains that I did it and I earned the title. Later in my career I attained all the glory I could ever hope for as a Lance Corporal when Marines I served with considered me their hero for going through a difficult Request Mast (a risky whistle-blowing maneuver). My ambition was to carry on in the Marine Corps and go as high as I could go – even after the office of the Commandant if I could.

It was very shortly after I had received all this glory and praise that the Holy Spirit came upon me for the first time in a decade or longer. However, because I wasn’t grounded in the scriptures and didn’t have a man of God in my life at the time, the simple message the Spirit was trying to give me (about divine governmental order) was twisted and corrupted by my own pride and by the whisperings of the devil. I thought that I could profit from this seemingly random epiphany and attain great rewards from the Marine Corps because of it. The Bible instructs us to buy truth but never sell it and because we have been given much we should also therefore freely give.

It’s taken five years to fully process that simple message the Spirit gave me and now I can say that I no longer have any earthly ambition that is driving me. My ambition is for the advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven; my heart is truly to see the Kingdom advance as quickly and efficiently as possible and to play whatever role I am to play in doing that. One of the gifts that I have been given by our creator is a proficiency with the English language (both spoken and written) and so if I can help do His will through His gifts, I will. Moreover scripture tells us that the Father will give us the desires of our heart when we walk with him, so I very well could end up writing a book and then I would well and truly have no earthly ambition left. (I’ve sometimes thought I might want to be the father of a family but it’s never been something I’ve fully committed to wanting – but that is another way that I could be blessed should I continue in the discipline of His will and not mine.)

So my question to anyone who reads this blog is – where are your ambitions? Are you still striving for rewards in the natural or have you realized that the only thing we’re taking out of this life is our relationships with other people? This doesn’t mean that a life of poverty is for everyone, nor does it mean that everyone will have a life of great financial abundance. But everyone is guaranteed a life of great spiritual abundance by obeying the King and living according to the laws of the Kingdom, such that, like Paul, we know how to live in abundance and live in abasement.

We’re to judge ourselves before we judge anyone else. I consider myself nothing but a private in YHWH Tzabaoth’s Army, having been little more than a “super private” (E3, Lance Corporal) in the United States Marine Corps. YHWH Tzabaoth’s Army has a better benefits package and if the USMC can be considered one of the most elite fighting forces that has ever been on this natural Earth then almost certainly His Army would be that much more excellent. Similarly, if the USMC’s boot camp and enlistment requirements are stringent, so much more would His Army’s requirements and disciplines be.

We may take some measure of pride and comfort in thinking that we are all soldiers in His Army but I would have to ask the tough question of what are your fruits in the role and capacity of a soldier for Elohim? What battles have you been winning when it comes to spiritual warfare for yourself and more importantly for other people? What formations are you marching in? Do you know how to wear the uniform of the day, and do you know what uniform goes with what posting? Do you know the standing orders and do you know how to seek out those other people we are to temporally obey because they’ve already put in the years and have lived the discipline? While ultimately Yeshua is our one and only true commanding officer, we are still to recognize those who have gone before us and whose iron will sharpen our iron on our path to report in to Yeshua for our next set of orders.

I know at least one man who is sharp enough that he could be considered a master blacksmith, able to forge swords out of scrap metal. That is not something that I can currently do, but if we have the heavenly perspective we realize that there is an element of an illusory nature to time, in that, in the Eternal realms the victory has already been won and we are already reigning with Christ! I know that one day, should I continue my walk down the narrow path faithfully and not be turned aside by things like worry, doubt, or my own flesh, I too will be able to forge swords from scrap metal. In fact, part of what I feel called to do is to re-equip the saints with a modern understanding of warfare, as the modern world is that much more complex and complicated compared to the ways warfare was fought 2000 years ago. How accurate are you as a basic soldier with your M16A4 Service Rifle of the Spirit? Do you have the discipline it takes to get “shots in the black” from 500 yards with an iron sight, or do you “miss the mark” (another phrase for sin!)?

There are many who are attracted to the honor that might be afforded a soldier in His Army but few I’ve found who actually live lives that bear the fruit of that kind of discipline and self-sacrifice. Prayerfully consider whether this is you, or whether you are even called to serve in His Army (there are 300+ million Americans but only 180,000 Marines! Not everyone in the Body need be in the Army, but the Army protects the rest of the Body!)

[This was originally composed to a friend on Facebook after he pressed me about why I believe in something that cannot be proven scientifically.]

I haven’t given you a fair response in part because I wanted to avoid getting into a debate with you. I’m not interested in debates and winning arguments – there was a time when I was but no longer. I can, however, share with you my perspective on why I base my life around my relationship with our triune Creator (YHWH, Yeshua, and the Ruach Qodesh) and the scriptures concerning them that have been around for 4000 years (Old Testament) and 2000 years (New Testament). (Yeshua can be found in the Old Testament too!)

The simplicity of it is you will never have a reason to believe in the scriptures or trust God for anything until the spiritual realm comes into your life. Hopefully, when the spiritual realm comes to you, it is the Kingdom of Heaven that you are entering into or seeing for the first time, and not the deceptions of the Kingdom of Darkness (which can mimic the miracles of God as seen when the court magi reproduced many of Moses’ miracles, and supported in scripture by Paul when he writes Lucifer and his ilk can appear as angels of light). Also, I realize that you will probably think justifying scripture with other scripture is some kind of circular logic or logical fallacy, to which I have no counter argument for you other than “Live the scriptures and then see what you think.”

I have spent the past five years stuck in the wake of what happened to me in February of 2010. You were an intimate witness to that time and for me the experience was intensely spiritual. I don’t remember how involved you were (I was trying to involve everyone) nor do I know how you feel about that time or whether you even remember it. That was the first time in a long time at that point in my life that the Holy Spirit had come upon me. But I wasn’t fully receiving everything I could have received because I hadn’t been grounded in scriptures since about the age of 12 and had in fact been very angry at God for many things and basically ambivalent about whether He even existed. I envied people who could believe in him, because I was still living by some of the moral principles that are found in the Bible (for example, I was never able to break my vow to not have sex before marriage – in part because I never learned to trust women, especially not that intimately, due to my relationship with my mother and in part because God was helping me keep the vow by befuddling circumstances).

Had I been grounded in the scriptures or had a man of God in my life at the time of my 2010 experience I would probably still be in the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps was my life and identity and part of my downfall. I prided myself on being one of the Few and the Proud, and I wanted to be the next LtCol Donner (at the least! I wanted to be a General!) Just as Satan tempted Jesus with all the kingdoms of the world, Satan came to me and whispered in my ear as the Holy Spirit was whispering to me and promised me great glory and status if I could just explain my “system” to the Marine Corps. Being given glory for the Request Mast didn’t help with my ego either, as people were coming up to me and telling me I was their personal hero (I still have a letter from Stiles signed by multiple people at the company, where the envelope is labeled “To the Hero of ELMACO” and MGySgt Haen has confirmed as recently as Christmas that people still talk about me out in Okinawa).

The simplicity of it was a vision of divine governmental order, but there’s always a spiritual competition and for the last five years I have had to fight for my eternal life (and many people have had to fight on my behalf as well). I almost lost that battle twice recently – once by giving up on someone who has demonstrated greater love for me than any other person on this earth and once again in the psych ward 1/1/2015 to 1/24/2015.

When you are in the psych ward they pump you full of medications, up to 40 different ones. If you are spiritual you know that there is a spirit behind everything – including medication (this is not to say all medication is bad). If you are natural senses reasoning, you might say that every medication has side effects. This last hospitalization has been the most difficult one to stabilize from afterwards because of the intense medications they put me on while in the ward. My sleep schedule is still awful, there’s residual effects from stuff they put me on, and at one point I couldn’t even dress myself without assistance.

I don’t know how any of this will help you or convince you of anything. Most people believe what they see, and most people haven’t seen the Kingdom of Heaven because the church has failed massively in its designated role of advancing the Kingdom. They have truncated the Gospel to simply “Jesus died for your sins,” when Jesus dying for us was never a message that He himself preached. John the Baptist preached “repent” (change your thinking) “for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” and after being baptized by John, Jesus taught the same thing. The entire message of the Bible concerns God trying to re-establish the Kingdom on Earth that he wanted to give to Adam who in turn gave it to Satan until Jesus redeemed it back to mankind.

I think it was Myles Monroe who said that Jesus dying at the cross is like the gate to a magnificent castle; the rest of the castle is the Kingdom of Heaven but everyone is stuck at the gate and don’t want to press in further.

I could write more but I don’t know if you’ll even read this much or even care because there’s nothing that tastes specifically “scientific” about what I wrote. I could write for ages about all the mystical experiences I’ve had (and I did that once, back in 2011) but I can’t GIVE you my mystical experience and my mystical experience has no right to be authoritative to you (but has every right to be authoritative to me – check out William James for more on this).

The philosophical fate of the West was sealed when we decided to take the perspective of Aristotle which is that there is no such thing as eternal forms and no use to talking about eternity (which Plato very much taught about – he also valued direct human interaction over writing everything down since much meaning is lost in writing and reading). Ever since then our God has been our natural senses and since you can’t see or perceive Spirit through the natural senses we’ve given up on trying to explain things that are outside the scope of science. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, it just means that if science can’t explain them they must not be valuable.

To those who followed this blog on the promise of my grand whirlwind tour of the United States, I apologize. I haven’t been posting because I’m still in the process of recovery from my last stint in the psych ward which was probably the single most disruptive one in my life. They put me on some very powerful drugs in the ward that I’m still filtering out of my system, and I still haven’t yet entered into a stable daily routine that leaves me time to accomplish all of the things I need and want to accomplish on a daily basis.

That said, I have been growing closer and closer to our triune Creator, and learning to rely more and more upon Him. As I recently told my senior pastor, the scriptures are the realest thing I’ve ever experienced and they continue to become more and more real every day.

It took me approximately four long years of searching the scriptures, attempting to live the scriptures and just very recently 100% trusting the scriptures. I am at a place where I am constantly mindful of whether I am trying to see my will done or His; I repent of any worry and I ask for forgiveness when I start pre-planning what I need to say to people I’m meeting in life. I’m also being tested in my stewardship, not just of finances but also of time. Time is perhaps the more difficult thing to steward and yet it is the thing in which we are all equal. We do not all have access to the same amount of finances but Elohim HAS given us the same amount of time each day. How much of our time are we investing into our walk with Him, sharing Him with a lost and dying world, advancing His Kingdom and being the light in the darkness?

I am encouraged that each day it is becoming easier and easier to rely on Him and easier and easier to sublimate myself to His will, but I am a long way from having “arrived” and a much longer way from “perfection.” I feel that I am at least bearing fruit, particularly some of the fruits of the spirit. In this season I am concerned about my fruit of self-control, which is one of the least talked about fruits. It seems many people are not so keen on discipline and would rather want for grace, but I wonder why we can’t have the fullness of both? A healthy body is helpful in ministry, especially if Elohim is calling you to be up for 24 or more hours at a time. You may find yourself in that situation where Yeshua is asking you to stay up for one more hour and pray with him and yet you find yourself giving in to your flesh just as the 12 did. One of the promises I want to see come to pass is the promise of Yeshua that we will do “these and greater things” by following his teaching and relying upon the Ruach Qodesh.

Be encouraged knowing that, as the scriptures say, trials and tribulations build perseverance, perseverance builds character, and character builds hope.

So, as I mentioned in my last brief post, I had been in a psych ward recently. Well, some of that followed me home in a bit of a naive decision to be a roommate with someone I had met in the ward. It caused some headaches and definitely stretched my faith and character.

My mentor and senior pastor tells me (and it is true) that I can still exercise too much selfishness. The last two years of my life have been pretty selfish – I was leeching off the VA and SSDI without much to show other than progress toward a 4 year degree. I am moving into a season where I can begin to exercise some degree of normalcy over how my day to day living is, the first time that’s been true really since having a job back toward the end of 2011. I am looking forward to building healthy habits such as having time to write, time to read, time to play music, time to work out, time to learn how to cook and shop for healthy food, and things of that nature.

It certainly wouldn’t hurt to find a godly man who needs a roommate but isn’t as crazy as I sometimes am or at least have the potential to be (certified 100% by the VA!)

Thanks to everyone who followed this blog and I hope to get back to you.